


I Hardly Know Them

by shadowcatfan (pressdbtwnpages)



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-10-13
Updated: 2002-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressdbtwnpages/pseuds/shadowcatfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xavier realizes that he doesn't know his students as well as he thought he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Hardly Know Them

**Author's Note:**

> No notes really. Except, there are a couple random references to random things. See if you can spot them!

I look around at my former students and realize I hardly know them. It's a humbling thought for any headmaster, but for a psychic, for _me_ it is deeply troubling.

In some ways I know them so well, so intimately. Even at a masked ball I can identify them by their way of walking, their posture. Kitty, whose determination looks like competence. Bobby, who hides his steel filled spine in a childlike slouch. Jubilee, whose appearance of pure energy demands her sheer determination. Marie, who walks like a southern belle but talks like James Dean. St. John who is on constant surveillance but walks as if sauntering into a bar.

And yet I hardly know them. I, the famed Professor Charles Xavier. I never stopped to put the pieces together. I did not see that Kitty is afraid of the dark, and afraid of love. I missed that Bobby is paralyzed by fear of failure, that he purposely keeps expectations low. I never realized that Jubilee is afraid of the dark place within her own soul, and desperately fears her past. Or that Marie, for all of our concern is the most well-adjusted member of her graduating class. It never occurred to me that St. John could be afraid of security and trust, that he is afraid of weakness at the expense of his friends.

I hardly know them because it never occurred to me to look, you see. I'm a psychic and they could talk to me. I'm a psychic and they didn't know they had to. I did not want to violate their trust, at the expense of camaraderie. I never knew I hardly know them, and now it's too late. I have to let these strangers I love go.


End file.
